It was my blackness that I thought made it difficult to date in high school. So, when my first girlfriend kissed me at a party, I was blown away. I swear I heard angels singing and saw a light shining, because a burden I didn't even know I was carrying had suddenly been lifted.

Femi Redwood of Milton, Delaware, grew up in an environment that was accepting of both her sexuality and her race, despite the fact that she was one of the few minorities in town. This only made her more observant later in life as she encountered less-accepting people and communities.

Sexuality need not be the focus of the stories written about either Chirlane McCray or Lorraine Hansberry; their accomplishments took place outside of their bedrooms. But sexuality is part of who they are -- who we all are -- it's an important part of the story, and it matters how that story is told.

The African-American community preaches unity and one love -- except if you're gay. It's almost like we lose our black card when we are LGBT. We are the lepers of the movement even though we have always been an integral part of it. Think Angela Davis. Think Bayard Rustin.

Most of the kids that the Hetrick-Martin Institute served were kids of color. We black, Puerto Rican, Asian, Indian and biracial kids were finding a way out of no way, creating impromptu families because our real families hated us or no longer claimed us as their own.

In 1637 the body of a white man was discovered dead in a boat. Armed settlers -- which we tell our children were God fearing, gentle, sharing, kind Pilgrims -- invaded a Pequot village. They also set the village, which included many children, on fire.

davenport's work has been neglected in contemporary literary criticism and retrospectives of poetry from the black arts and women's liberation movements, but it is ripe for a revisiting and a reappraisal. Now readers can have an electronic copy of davenport's iconic it's like this.

Since I launched oursistacircle.com, my social networking site for lesbians of color, in 2009, I have witnessed many black-lesbian-owned businesses fail or struggle to survive because of the lack of support in our own community.

The mission of OurSistaCircle is to connect, empower, inform and support lesbians of color globally. But what else could such a website do to be more unique? It could allow members to create genuine friendships, and it could address their emotional and mental concerns.

We -- lesbians of color -- are already shouldering disproportionate concerns about our visibility without folks like you adding to the load. We are living in a society that almost pathologically refuses to acknowledge our existence... that is, until our existence is perceived as a threat.